Despite significant improvement in recent decades, blacks still score consistently lower than whites on tests of academic performance. But recent studies show that the gap is not genetic in origin and suggest how it can be closed.

It is well known that the conservative movement has for years enjoyed a decided financial advantage on the battleground of ideas -- they have far more corporate and foundation support than liberals. But conservatives don't just have more money; they spend it better, too.

All over America, owners are demanding extravagant subsidies and tax breaks for new stadiums. If communities want to keep their teams, there's often a cheaper solution than giving way to these demands. Follow the example of Green Bay.

Liberalism took a fateful turn in the 1960s by redefining reform in racial terms. Two new books on urban politics sometimes overstate their case against recent liberal policies, but they help clarify what went wrong.

In Chicago, like most other big cities in America, manufacturing was once the core of the urban economy -- until recent decades, when most of it moved out to suburban areas and beyond. But while much smaller today, manufacturing still makes a vital contribution that cities should work hard to maintain.

The language of our emerging digital culture suggests adventure, daring, and unprecedented novelty, while we sit comfortably at our desks, alone, communing with our computer screens. Are we being taken in by our own metaphors?

Japan's economic crisis is a case study in the long-term costs of protecting inefficient industries. Yet it also shows how the pressures for protectionism become irresistible without a strong safety net and policies to aid displaced workers.

Features

Women used to do all the unpaid work of caring for the kids of aging parents. Although career barriers have fallen, women won't have real equal opportunity until America recognizes its crisis of caring.

When the Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act, it was a triumph for civil liberties. Now new forms of censorship threaten to cut off young people's legitimate access to sexual information in cyberspace.

Features

For nearly a century, childhood has been a mitigating condition in the eyes of the criminal law. Now that legislators want to try more children as adults, we need to be careful about throwing the baby out with the jail key.

The gears of the American change machine -- presidents, parties, and social movements -- no longer work together. A new view of America's major political transformations, from Jefferson and Jackson down to the current disarray of progressive forces.

The cloning debate has highlighted moral questions that are likely only to become even more difficult as biotechnology advances: What should be the line between permissible and impermissible genetic interventions? Is our bedrock belief in human equality about to break down?

The International Monetary Fund casts itself as valiant superhero, swooping in to rescue troubled countries from self-inflicted financial disaster. In fact, the demands for austerity it has recently imposed on fundamentally sound economies in Asia and elsewhere have made their problems much worse.

A few years ago educational standards and national testing seemed on their way. But the push for standards has set off predictable reactions from different quarters. Ironically, testing now may be downgraded in importance.

The conventional wisdom is that American students perform woefully compared to their foreign peers. Not so: America's kids stack up far better than the critics allow. But there is much to learn from experience abroad about improving our schools.

The strongholds of municipal liberalism are gone; the coalition of immigrants, unionists, poor people, and neighborhoods has been replaced by alliances between tough-on-crime Republican mayors and organized business. But the seeds of a revival are there.

Wired magazine says with new technology we'll all be like gods and should get good at it. That apparently means feeling no restraint -- if something looks good, do it, buy it, invent it, become it. Where have we heard this before?

Supposedly, NAFTA will lead to increased movement of goods and services between Mexico and the United States -- but not to more movement of people. That, however, reflects a fundamentally mistaken view of migration. A better understanding should reframe our entire immigration policy.

Some liberals worry that trade with low-wage countries will depress American wages. But globalization not only helps lift Third World people out of poverty; it also benefits American consumers and workers. Instead of pursuing protectionism, domestic policies should assure that the benefits of trade are equitably shared.

Cross-national group loyalties can neither be wished away or erased. Yet the idea of the American nation is worth defending against multicultural attack. Herewith some ground rules for a culturally diverse nation.

When the Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act, cyberlibertarians breathed a sigh of relief. But keeping government out of the censorship business may not be enough to assure freedom online -- censorship may now be privatized.

In pursuit of campaign finance reform, many seek to reverse the precedent established by the Supreme Court in 1975, protecting campaign expenditures as free speech. But if the Court's ruling is overturned, the general protections of the First Amendment might be severely narrowed.

The explosion of issue advocacy -- money spent by individuals and independent groups to support political causes -- threatens to make even an outright ban on "soft" money irrelevant. Worse, much of what passes for "issue advocacy" is really covert campaign financing. Still worse, it can't be regulated.